Here's why some militaries have strange pixelated camouflage

Over the last two decades or so, armed forces around the world
have abandoned their camouflage patterns in favor of a more
pixelated, machine-engineered camo, similar to the blocky
graphics in the popular online game "Minecraft."

And while it may seem counterintuitive, the digital-print
look of the pixelated camos is actually notably more
effective than earlier designs that sought to mimic
nature.

According to retired US Army Lt. Timonthy R. O'Neill, large
blotchy patterns work best for long distances and small patterns
work best up close.

Pixelated patterns marry the two ideas together.

As the BBC notes,"close up, the small
patches mimic natural patterns on the scale of leaves on a tree,
but from farther away, the clusters of squares create a macro
texture that blends with branches, trees and shadows."

"Well when I looked at the data I think my observation was
something on the order of 'holy crap'," recalled O'Neill to the
BBC.

A study commissioned by the Office of Naval Research showed that
soldiers wearing the Marine pattern camo (MARPAT) took 2.5 seconds to detect, while soldiers wearing
monocolor, or the large, blotchy NATO camo, could be detected in
just about one second.

Here's an example of how pixelated camos work in the environment
below:

Wikimedia
Commons

In an armed conflict where the enemy is within visual
range, these seconds make all the difference in the world.

However, some pixelated camos have not been as
successful.

The US Army's overly ambitious rollout of a pixelated camo
(ARPAT) proved too much of a cookie-cutter solution to the
various theaters of war US Army soldiers find themselves
in.

The UCP (Universal Camouflage Pattern) adopted by the
army in Afghanistan proved a huge mistake, as its lack of brown
hues made soldiers stand out starkly in the mostly desert
backgrounds.

Soldiers
of Company C, 2nd Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, 1st Stryker
Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, work as a six-member
team to lift a heavy log over their heads 20 times while
competing in the Ivy Heptathlon during Iron Horse Week, January
28, 2015.Flickr/ The US
Army

Testing has proven time and time again that pixelated camos, as
long as they use appropriate colors, are winners.

This lesson was perhaps lost on the Chinese, who unveiled a
shocking maritime camo scheme on a variety of armored vehicles
and missile batteries in their September 3, 2015, military
parade.

The blue pixelated camo makes little sense for land-combat
vehicles, and even an amphibious vehicle would lose its need for
a bright blue camo scheme as soon as it left the water.

Perhaps the Chinese chose the color scheme to signal a rhetorical
shift in the focus of their armed forces to naval strength.

China's
People's Liberation Army (PLA) navy soldiers roll on their
armored vehicles to Tiananmen Square during the military parade
marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, in
Beijing, China, September 3, 2015.Reuters